The Association

FuseNet Members

Photo of the Month

You are here

Lockheed Martin announces compact Fusion Reactor plans

At the recent Google “Solve for X” conference on February 7, Lockheed Martin's long-term R&D department (“Skunk Works”) announced they are working on a compact fusion reactor. With what seems a 4th generation prototype called "T4", the aerospace giant says to have developed a high beta configuration, which allows a compact reactor design and faster development timeline.

Public reactions describe the announcement of their activities on nuclear fusion remarkable, because Lockheed Martin doesn't usually make public announcements about Skunkwork projects unless they have a high degree of confidence in their chances of success. The developement timeline indicates plans to have a prototype 100-megawatt nuclear fusion machine of Lockheed Martin tested in 2017, and that a fully operational machine should be grid-ready ten years from now.

Image of Lockheed Martin showing Test Device "T4"

Some of the properties reported from the presentation:

A self-tuning feedback mechanism whereby the magnetic field increases the farther out that the plasma goes

Novel magnetic field configuration that has very few open field lines compared to tokamak design

Very "good arch curvature" of the field lines

The system has a beta of about 1

System is working with D-T fuel

It is certainly an interesting development to see a large industrial company showing interest in fusion energy, but -unfortunately - not many technical details were given away. It is therefore remains unclear how realistic their concept of a small fusion reactor will be, as no answers were given to critical issues such as tritium handling, how good the confinement of the alpha particles is assumed to be, how the coils can be mounted and shielded sufficiently inside the vacuum vessel when exposed to the plasma, and how the 14 MeV neutrons are to be shielded in a compact reactor.

To add your own event to this list, send an email to admin@fusenet.eu or, in case you are a Fusenet member, login to the Fusenet website and use the option "Add event" in the members panel on the left.